Tag: BIOMETRICS

In Washington state, a series of court rulings, public records disclosures, investigative reports, and municipal policy decisions have converged to reveal the scale of the Flock Safety camera network and the complex ways its data has been shared across agencies, inside and outside the state.

The developments have heightened concerns about surveillance, civil immigration enforcement, reproductive freedom, and the limits of local control over new policing technologies.

The clearest shift came from a Skagit County Superior Court ruling last week in which Judge Elizabeth Yost Neidzwski ordered police departments to release images captured by Flock Safety cameras under Washington’s Public Records Act.

The ruling held that the vehicle images, collected automatically as cars pass roadside camera fixtures, constitute public records regardless of whether they were ever used in specific investigations.

The case originated from a records request submitted by a private citizen who sought access to a half-hour of data from Flock cameras operated by police departments in Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood.

The cities sued to block the request, arguing that the images were exempt, and warning that releasing them might infringe individual privacy or undermine investigative tools.

The court rejected those claims and pointed to the scale of the surveillance, which captures the movements of thousands of drivers not suspected of wrongdoing.

The judge’s ruling dealt directly with the nature of modern automated surveillance.

Unlike red light cameras or speeding sensors which activate when a law is triggered, Flock cameras continuously record every car that passes, producing streams of timestamped images that can show not only plates, but also vehicle features and occupants.

The breadth of that record was central to the court’s conclusion that the data is public. The ruling immediately raised questions for dozens of other police agencies across Washington that now operate similar systems.

Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood had already deactivated their cameras before the decision while the dispute was pending, but the ruling makes voluntary suspension more consequential.

Police departments around the state are now consulting with legal counsel to determine whether continuing to use Flock cameras means they must accept that their footage is subject to broad public disclosure.

Sedro-Woolley had installed its first Flock cameras earlier this year and emphasized their value in finding stolen vehicles, missing persons, and suspected offenders. City officials highlighted early successes, including a robbery arrest and the recovery of an Alzheimer’s patient who had gone missing.

The system was also presented as a cost-efficient enhancement to city policing, as Flock cameras require a fraction of the annual cost of hiring additional staff. But those benefits have been overshadowed by the legal and ethical questions surrounding data access and control.

For now, the physical camera hardware remains in place in Sedro-Woolley, but the system has been disabled and is not capturing images.

The concerns extend far beyond the legal question of whether Flock images are public records. In October, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights released research showing that local Flock systems across the state had been accessed by Border Patrol and other federal agencies involved in immigration enforcement in ways that may violate state law.

Washington’s Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, restricts law enforcement agencies from using state or local resources to support civil immigration enforcement. However, Flock system records obtained by researchers show that Border Patrol ran thousands of searches on data from at least 31 Washington jurisdictions.

Some of those searches occurred in cities that had not knowingly granted access. Others appear to have resulted from how Flock’s network sharing features were configured.

The University of Washington researchers described three kinds of access. The first is direct sharing, where one police agency grants access to another through a one-to-one network connection.

The second is indirect or back door access, where agencies gain entry because another organization in the network has enabled broad sharing rules.

The third is side door access, where local police run searches on behalf of outside agencies, including federal immigration authorities. In some cities, audits showed instances where local officers conducted searches tagged with terms such as “ICE or “immigration” despite state restrictions.

Auburn, which operates a network of Flock cameras, released a statement on October 20 acknowledging that federal immigration officers had gained access to its system through the Flock network’s national lookup function.

The department said it was not aware access had been granted and immediately disabled the feature once notified. Auburn now conducts monthly reviews of all external access to its Flock network and has pledged to permanently revoke access for any agency found to be using the system for immigration enforcement.

The city emphasized that it remains committed to lawful policing while respecting privacy rights and state law.

Other jurisdictions have taken similar steps. Renton reported discovering that federal immigration agents could search its Flock data through another state’s law enforcement agency. The department suspended all external sharing until the source of access could be determined.

In Lakewood and several other cities, police officials said they were unaware of how access had been enabled and moved to restrict or review sharing settings.

The rapid expansion of Flock’s business model has complicated local oversight. The company now operates tens of thousands of cameras nationwide and encourages agencies to share data regionally or across state lines.

Flock’s pitch to police departments has emphasized cost efficiency, ease of installation, and investigative gains.

But as the University of Washington Human Rights report notes, the network’s scale makes it difficult for agencies to determine who has access to their data.

The company allows local administrators to configure sharing, but many police departments either do not fully understand the implications of those settings or rely on default configurations that enable broader access than intended.

Flock’s network also incorporates private entities, including neighborhood associations, shopping malls, and big-box retail properties. Many of those private customers share their camera data with police.

In some cases, police agencies have access to private camera networks without disclosing those relationships publicly. The layered nature of these networks makes it possible for a search initiated anywhere in the country to draw on data from Washington without clear visibility into how that connection was formed.

The debate in Washington is unfolding at a time when reproductive rights and gender-affirming healthcare protections are being tested nationwide. Privacy advocates warn that travel pattern data derived from license plate surveillance could be used to target people seeking care across state lines.

Despite the public pressure and legal scrutiny, many police departments continue to defend the technology. Chiefs in Sedro-Woolley, Mount Vernon, and other cities describe Flock cameras as valuable public safety tools that do not use facial recognition and capture only vehicles, not biometric identifiers.

They frame the cameras as extensions of routine policing work, arguing that the data is only accessed during investigations and automatically deleted after 30 days. But those assurances assume users understand and control the system as configured.

The University of Washington report shows several agencies either never ran network audits or did not know how to access them, leaving oversight gaps.

The statewide conversation is now shifting toward legislative action. Other states, including Virginia and Illinois, have enacted limits on data retention and cross-jurisdiction sharing. Washington currently has no equivalent statutory framework governing local use of license plate surveillance systems.

Governor Bob Ferguson recently issued an executive order emphasizing the importance of protecting private data held by state agencies and reaffirming Washington’s commitments to immigrant rights. But the order does not directly apply to municipal police departments.

State legislators are signaling interest in addressing the issue in the upcoming session.